RNA-seq of EBVwt or EBVmutant infected human primary B cells on day 1, 2, 3, and 4 post-infection

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a herpes virus that primarily infects, activates and immortalizes resting human B cells in vitro. EBNA2, a viral protein, is essential for the immortalization process because it transactivates a plethora of viral and cellular genes by interacting with the cellular DNA binding protein CBF1. Besides ubiquitously expressed CBF1, EBNA2 also interacts with early B cell factor (EBF) 1 which is a pioneer transcription factor specifying the B cell lineage. We have identified an alpha1-helix within EBNA2 as a critical structure for the interaction with EBF1 and in this RNA-seq experiment we wanted to see how gene regulation upon EBV infection is affected once the alpha1-helix is deleted in EBNA2 and the interaction with EBF1 is abolished.